Reviews

There is a truly eclectic and international feel to today's reviews.

Wayne Shorter/Mikkel Ploug Quartets

The Helix

Presented in association with Note Productions, the Wayne Shorter Quartet - Shorter (tenor/soprano), Danilo Perez (piano), John Patitucci (bass) and Brian Blade (drums) - inaugurated the Helix's series of major jazz events this year with a memorable concert.

It was clear from the opening that their familiarity lay as much with each other and their mutual willingness to take chances, as in any common ground in the material. And, as a scheduled hour-long set stretched to over half as long again, it produced some of the most intensely focused playing heard here for some time.

Apart from its very contemporary approach to rhythm, and the freedom it practised in relation to line and harmony, the quartet was striking in other ways. It's not the only one to do this, but the concept of a solo is radically altered within the group. Solos tended to rise organically from within the group's interplay, whether that dialogue involved the whole group or sections of it.

They also tended to be brief, and rapidly absorbed into the next joint improvisation. In a manner difficult to pinpoint, the architecture of the solo derived less from its structure than from its place in the group interplay. It's an approach demanding of the players and of the listener, but an absorbing and rewarding one, that is filled with a constant sense of surprise.

Another feature of the quartet's work was its acute sense of motivic development. Although Shorter frequently led the way in this, the others were free to contribute, too. It allowed them to take the most fragmentary material - for instance, a motif from the sentimental old ballad, Smiling Through - and use it for an extended musical conversation that is tender, funny and imaginative.

Another piece, beautifully sustained, was built from a very simple piano ostinato. The basic idea was developed with great ingenuity, revered and gently mocked in equal measure, before being concluded with Shorter switching from tenor, which he had used until then, to soprano. This is a remarkable bunch of musicians and, for once, the standing ovation was fully justified.

The Mikkel Ploug group's opening session, regrettably, was a dull, lacklustre affair, thoroughly disappointing, and not helped by an unsympathetic sound setup.

Ray Comiskey

Armoniosi Concerti

Coach House, Dublin Castle

Yet another fine early music group from Spain, Armoniosi Concerti are on a Music Network tour that offers amazing riches, especially to anyone interested in the guitar and in song. The programme consists of Spanish music from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and the performances are a striking vindication of historical instruments.

I have heard music of this kind in transcriptions for modern guitar, but when you hear it performed by a consort of three vihuelas - the guitar's ancestor, and the instrument for which this music was conceived - you are in a different world. Most of the music was songs, and the only deficiency in the concert was the absence of translations or paraphrases that would have helped us appreciate not just the sound, but what the song was saying.

Maria Espada has a beautiful soprano voice. It is not one of those angelic-clean voices preferred by many early music groups (especially the English), but is full-blooded, with a range of tone that seems entirely suitable for such sensuous music. Many of the songs, such as those in a 1554 collection by Miguel de Fuenllana, have a simple folk- like character. Their high-art qualities lie mainly in the sophisticated and subtle accompaniments.

The vihuela is ideal for such textures. Even though three instruments were playing, one could hear polyphony - independent lines, richly ornamented in the way at which the vihuela excels. It's polyphony with a tune on top.

It is also dance music, for almost all of it has roots in popular or courtly entertainment. One of the most remarkable qualities of this remarkable group was the ability to sustain a dance-like rhythm, not by thrusting it on the ear, but as a flexible background. Go and hear them if you can.

Tours to Galway tonight and Ballina on Thursday

Martin Adams

This Piece of Earth

Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast

It's the end of the road for John and Maeve Hardy. They have made their way to this terrible, barren place, the last survivors of a straggling trail of desperate humanity, pushed to the lowest depths of degradation by starvation, homelessness and a devastated land, which can no longer offer nourishment or sustenance of any kind. Only the carrion flourish, preying upon this vulnerable pair, who have reached the point of physical and emotional collapse.

Richard Dormer's Beckett-inspired play has an urgent sense of "lest we forget" about it. Set inland from the coast of Co Antrim, it seeks to underline how no part of this island was untouched by the seething tentacles of the Great Famine and illustrates the extraordinary human capacity for survival in almost unwatchable close-up.

Rachel O'Riordan's harrowing production is possessed of an unremitting, balletic beauty, with Lalor Roddy and Pauline Goldsmith laying their souls bare as they dance this last, agonising pas de deux. They breathe life and energy into each other, locked in almost constant physical contact, cajoling, persuading, bullying, even flirting their way into the next despairing step towards the sea and possible escape. The story of their simple life unfolds through flashback, reminiscence and the occasionally heavy-handed piece of exposition.

Diego Pitarch's circular set of stinking peat, empty windswept horizon and bleached stones absorbs and throws back James Whiteside's painterly lighting, providing a fitting stage for John and Maeve's final hour. And it is witness, too, to the apocalyptic arrival of Dormer's Father O'Brien, a man who, having seen too much, rails against the knowledge that his prayers and supplications fall mockingly upon this rocky piece of earth, sucked dry by cruel, uncaring oppressors.

Runs until Sat, then tours to Coalisland, Downpatrick, Lisburn, Armagh, Enniskillen, Derry, Limerick and Galway

Jane Coyle

Yann Tiersen

Tripod, Dublin

It's unusual to find Yann Tiersen in this kind of setting. The French multi-instrumentalist is perhaps most famous for his subtle, layered soundtracks on films such as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain and Good Bye Lenin! Here, though, he has strapped on a guitar, turned up the distortion, and the results are thrilling.

The lilting, jaunty jigs and swirling waltzes have been replaced with frenetic, full-blooded post rock. When he rallies the troops with his guitar the result is roaring, muscular music that could topple a house. When Tiersen picks up his bow and violin, it's for humming, rollicking songs that flicker, leap and punch - Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three finally has some competition in the small but competitive area of fiddle-playing lunatics.

When the accordion is dragged into the ring, the dexterity and composure are all there, but Tiersen manages to go the distance in some bruising rounds with the distorted guitars and hammering rhythm section.

There is still a distinctly French flavour to much of the set, and many of the tracks are shot through with some elegant, almost Middle Eastern riffs. Much like his more classical works, the songs are built up through layer upon layer of seemingly simple melodies that make for a brawny, sprawling, powerful whole.

Vocals are sparse in the set, with State of Shock a superb exception. However, the music stands out from the instrumental rock crowd thanks to the pinpoint playing of the band. Christine Ott's gloriously inventive sound-effects on her Martenot Organ give a spacey, otherworldly texture and, coupled with the juggernaut of Marc Sens's guitar work and Ludovic Morillon and Stéphane Bouvier on drums and bass respectively, it's not long before the audience is dragged into territory usually occupied by groups such as Mercury Rev, Mogwai and Muse.

There is tension aplenty on Tiersen's studio albums; even when it's the refined pleasures of the Amélie soundtrack, there is a barely discernable edgy undertow, and to see it realised in this spectacular, grinding fashion is a joy.

Yann Tiersen might essentially be a classical musician, but he has an instinct for rock that is enthralling and bewildering.

Laurence Mackin

Gustav Leonhardt

Parade Tower, Kilkenny Castle

Froberger - Méditation sur ma mort future. d'Anglebert - Suite in G. Pachelbel - Fantasia in E flat. JCF Fischer - Chaconne in A minor. Böhm - Suite in C minor. Reincken - Toccata in G minor. Bach - Suite in F minor BWV823, Suite in E minor BWV996

There is something austere, otherworldly, even priestly, about the stage manner of the great Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt.

He makes no fuss, and he courts no applause. You might put it down to his age, as he is just over a year away from his 80th birthday. But the formality of his manner is hardly likely to be age-related. His playing is still a cause for wonder, both for its unostentatious virtuosity as well as its control of gestures of the subtlest intimacy.

This seems a near-ideal venue for harpsichord music. It gives everyone in the audience a feeling of being close to the performer, and it has an acoustic that not only allows the smallest musical gesture to register, and but also enables the instrument to fill the space with sound. It was a real pleasure to hear Leonhardt in such sympathetic surroundings. He's a player whose finely-controlled rhythm, resourceful dynamic shading and remarkable flexibility of line effectively redraw the parameters of the possible on the harpsichord.

His characterisation of dance movements throughout the evening, in d'Anglebert, Böhm and Bach, was strong and fully convincing. He turned a fantasia by Pachelbel into an object lesson in the creation of the illusion of extemporisation in performance, and showed in a chaconne by Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer how rock-solid periodicity can be delivered with a light touch. The second half of the programme was devoted to Bach, where he sounded at once implacable, imperturbable and extraordinarily vital. If there is a polar opposite to what's long been known as sewing-machine Bach, then Leonhardt's Bach was it.

Michael Dervan